Vladimir Putin has been featured in political headlines more and more frequently since Donald Trump became president. But with news of the twosome’s undisclosed meeting currently dominating international interest, the President of Russia found himself the star of a more unlikely news vertical this week: the entertainment section.

Wednesday morning, The Hollywood Reporter published a story claiming that Putin had “been excised from two upcoming studio features” for fear of a retaliatory Russian hack. The biggest of the two features that The Hollywood Reporter alleged went to Putin-excising extremes was Red Sparrow, the anticipated adaptation of Jason Matthews’s spy thriller starring Jennifer Lawrence.

The only problem with the claim? Putin barely had a role in the movie’s source material—about the romance between a Russian ballerina-turned-spy and a CIA agent (played in the film by Joel Edgerton), set against an espionage backdrop.

In his largely glowing 2003 review of the book, New York Times literary critic Charles Cumming acknowledged that Putin had only a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it appearance in the story—and even called out the Putin cameo as one of the book’s few weaknesses.

“I think it was a mistake to give Vladimir Putin a walk-on part,” wrote Cumming.

An insider with knowledge of the production told Vanity Fair that Putin was never included in the script.

The other project that reportedly scrubbed Putin from its script is Kursk, EuropaCorp’s upcoming drama from Danish director Thomas Vinterberg about the 2000 Russian submarine disaster. Per the report, Putin “appears in the source material, Robert Moore’s best-seller A Time to Die, and was in early versions of the screenplay.”

A source close to production confirms that Putin was mentioned in a very early iteration of the script, but says that he, along with other political leaders, were cut to focus the film on the heroes of the story—the 23 soldiers who survived the submarine crash, which took place during a naval exercise. In fact, the cut was first reported back in March and explained it as a strategy “to shift the story’s focus to the rescue mission rather than the politics behind the disaster.”

If EuropaCorp really were frightened of Putin and a possible retaliation, the studio might have scrapped the entire project—which will undoubtedly refresh the public’s memory of the disaster, which was a symbol of national failure for Russia. A recap, per the New York Times:

The two mysterious explosions that sent the Kursk crashing bow first
to the bottom of the sea cost Russia not only the lives of 118 seamen,
but a large measure of pride, Russians watched their leaders lie about
the crew's fate, refuse foreign help in trying to rescue them and
insist -- over the opinion of many experts that the explosions were
caused by a malfunctioning torpedo -- that a collision with a foreign
submarine caused the crash.

Every disaster since then -- from the burning television tower that
caught fire in Moscow only weeks later, to repeated battle failures in
Chechnya and now the downing of a Russian passenger airliner which
exploded over the Black Sea last week -- has been compared to the
Kursk as a symbol of national failure.

VanityFair.com reached out to representatives for both Fox and EuropaCorp, both of whom told us they have no comment.